"Waistcoat" Cuirass (Combined Breast and Backplates) (c. 1580): Art, History and Details

"Waistcoat" Cuirass (Combined Breast and Backplates) (c. 1580) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This cuirass is a specialized type of costume armor. In addition to protecting its owner's torso, it was clearly intended to simulate a civilian jacket, or doublet, with a row of buttons down the front. The owner would have opened it like an ordinary doublet since the two halves are hinged to a narrow backplate.

Object facts

• Title: "Waistcoat" Cuirass (Combined Breast and Backplates)
• Date: c. 1580
• Culture: North Italy, 16th century
• Type: Arms and Armor
• Technique: Steel; brass rivets simulating buttons
• Dimensions: Overall: 47.6 x 29.6 x 25.7 cm (18 3/4 x 11 5/8 x 10 1/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Arms & Armor
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1916.1721

A detail from the museum

While it would provide some protection to the torso, the armor here is very light; fashion not function was the prerequisite.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Severance

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of Arms and Armour. [Boston, Massachusetts]: [Frank Gair Macomber], 1900.
• Gilchrist, Helen Ives. A Catalogue of the Collection of Arms & Armor Presented to the Cleveland Museum of Art by Mr. and Mrs. John Long Severance; 1916-1923. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1924.
• Fliegel, Stephen N. Arms and Armor: The Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland, Ohio]: The Museum, 1998.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.